So what is the solution? It is OK to allow people to use their sense of greed to achieve more, but you have to channel that drive, with regulation and tax incentives, in ways that are manageable and not destructive. So, for example, you don’t let banks lend money, with no money down, and with no care as to the client’s ability to pay. I built some 1200 houses over the past 30 years, and I was never involved in a foreclosure because you had to put 20% down, and we wouldn’t let you borrow beyond your means.

You’re right to suggest that there is a double standard here. The money could definitely have been put to better use. However, in the fix we’re in, we’re going to do almost anything we can to salvage whatever we can of our financial system, even though we allowed some very greedy people to call the shots in the first place, and to create the mess we’re in.

However, recent developments have brought into question whether unbridled capitalism is really a good thing. Problems like Global Warming have brought into focus the notion that certain assumptions about our way of life do not always pan out. For example, the decision some 150 years ago to run our economies on fossil fuels may turn out to be one of the greatest blunders in the history of man.

You do want to grow your economy, because it helps you create jobs, and it helps you accumulate wealth, which in turns helps you to give your people a decent quality of life. But you cannot grow in a healthy way without taking environmental concerns into account. There is no point in growing your economy if the growth and your way of life are not sustainable.

Everything we produce should be recycled. There should be no waste. And energy should be clean, realiable, renewable, and affordable. These aspirations are not pie in the sky wishful thinking. They are the foundations of a healthy and sustainable environment which will help assure a quality of life that is real, not illusory, and that takes into account all the consequences of what we choose to do.

It is my fear that the rest of the Arab world will use it as a model for change, as it has absolutely no real civil society at its political base.

So in this case, for example, the developers should have been forced to calculate some additional costs for additional sewage facilities, before being allowed to build their projects without enough sewage capacity. In the long run, they would have been better off, because a proper sewage system helps protect the viability of their investment, and makes for a much more pleasant swimming experience.